


Why Severus Snape is a Bad Person

by SiriuslySherlocked



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Opinion, Rant, debate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:21:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25691245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SiriuslySherlocked/pseuds/SiriuslySherlocked
Summary: An essay on why I believe Severus Snape is a bad person. Most people agree on that, but not everyone. Of course, Snape lovers are pretty stubborn, so I don't expect them to be convinced. This is more of just a rant in the form of an essay.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	Why Severus Snape is a Bad Person

Let’s debate: Is Severus Snape a good person?  
~~No. No he’s not.~~  
This should be obvious, but there are MAJOR spoilers in here, so you’ve officially been warned.

A long running debate in the Harry Potter fandom is whether or not Harry Potter’s potions teacher, Severus Snape, is a good person. There’s no argument that he was a very important character to the series, but should he be honored or shamed? To an extent, I think JK Rowling’s tweet from a while ago describes it pretty well: that he’s all grey. There is both good and bad. But does one big good deed make up for many smaller bad deeds?

  
First, we need to define what “good” means. Does it mean “morally correct”? Or “kind”? Merriam Webster defines “good person” as this: “an honest, helpful, or morally good person.”

  
Was Snape any of those things? To an extent. Honest is a difficult one to assign, considering he was a double agent. Helpful, yes, very; he provided insider information on Voldemort. Morally good: ehhh.

  
I think of him as a sort of Dolores Umbridge type of “morally good”. Before you all flair up and go running to the comments, I just mean that he wasn’t evil, but wasn’t really good either. Umbridge was a horrible person, literally no one disagrees with that. But she wasn’t a Death Eater. She abused her students, but so did Snape—just in a more subtle way. If you really think about it, the two are pretty similar. They both are abusive, prejudiced, racist (with blood purity and/or nonhumans), but not evil. The difference is that Umbridge was much more obvious with her abuse, had no redeeming qualities, and was not very important to the actual storyline. 

  
There’s a lot to break down in what I’ve just said, but we’re going to go back to trying to define “good”.

  
According to PsychologyToday, there are many different definitions of what a good person is, as expected. The most sensible definition is that you are a good person if “at the end of your days, you leave the world a better place — you have done good deeds, saved lives (or souls), raised good children, made others happy, and the list goes on.”  
Wow, so almost all of those factors can be applied to Snape. Done good deeds? Yes. He was a key factor in defeating Voldemort. Saved lives? Yes. Again, helped defeat Voldemort. Raised good children? Although he had no biological children, his students grew up with him. However, his influence didn’t seem to do much to the students’ moralities. Made others happy? Hmm… I’m gonna say no.

  
The article continues on to narrow down four principle traits of a "good person”: Prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude. What do these all mean?

  
Prudence is essentially taking the time and sense to make wise decisions, to do what you “should”. For example, if you saw someone drowning in a lake, would you save them? I’m sure most of you said “yes, of course!”, but it’s not that simple. There’s an entirely different psychological phenomenon that explains why you probably wouldn’t save them if you were really there, but that doesn’t have to do with this essay. Does Snape make wise decisions? Well, like any person, he’s made good ones and bad ones. Ultimately, though, he did fulfill his duty as Dumbledore’s spy, so I think prudence is a general yes.

  
Temperance is the ability to control your emotions, like learning to control your temper. (Considering I’m writing an entire essay on my beliefs about Snape, I probably need some practice with this one.) This is an interesting one to apply to Snape. He’s typically very stiff and dry; he isn’t like, say, Harry, who is passionate and acts out on it. Snape has his moments of emotional response, of course, but typically he doesn’t explicitly act out. But, notice I said “explicitly”. Snape DEFINITELY lets his emotions interfere with his social interactions. He’s quieter about it, but one of the biggest arguments against him is how he lets his past interfere with his treatment of his students.

This segways nicely into the third principle, justice. Justice is treating people fairly and being unbiased. 

  
HA!

  
That’s a Big Old Nope for Snape! Favoritism is one of his most noticeable qualities in the series. He consistently favors his own house, Slytherin, and especially gives the Gryffindor house a hard time. But favoritism is the least worrisome of his behavior. The biggest reason pro-Snapers give to justify his behavior is his past. He had an abusive childhood, he fell in love, then watched that love get snatched away from him by his school bully. I mean, that’s pretty damn shitty, I gotta say. But really? You’re going to go become a Death Eater because you’re butthurt over your crush disowning you after you called her an offensive slur? Tad dramatic, don’t you think?

  
The last principle quality, fortitude, is having courage and being brave enough to stand up for your beliefs and moralities. Snape is brave, but he didn’t stand up for his morals. He stood up for Dumbledore’s, because Lily would have wanted him to. He became a Death Eater after Hogwarts, he’s got some unresolved problems with blood purity, and he’s still letting his childhood bother him years later, but he was brave for Lily.

  
So, Snape checks two out of four of those boxes. Seems pretty even on a small scale, but we need to look a little deeper into these qualities—particularly, justice. Let’s break down his past.

  
Abusive childhood? Yeah, that sucks. But Harry had one too, he was just able to let it go by the time he became an adult. But hey, not every victim turns out that way. Not all victims are criminals, of course, but criminals are statistically more likely to have had abusive childhoods. Snape’s behavior based on this alone is still inexcusable, but understandable.

  
Fell in love? Well, now we need to define “love”. Merriam Webster, again, defines love as this: “strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties”. Personally, though, I don’t think love is simple enough to be defined in one, stiff sentence like this. My definition of love is putting someone else’s needs before yours.

  
~~Wait isn’t that what Olaf says love is in Frozen? Funny coincidence!~~

  
But basically, caring about someone else more than yourself, being completely selfless for them, desperate to make them happy. The big difference between love and obsession happens when the one you love doesn’t love you back. If you’re obsessed with them, you’re angry and resentful that they don’t like you back. You’re thinking about yourself. If you love them, you’re sad, but if they’re happier with someone else, you don’t want to hold them back. You’re thinking about _them_. Which of those sound more like Snape?

  
If he loved Lily, he would want her to be happy whether that included himself or not. He definitely wouldn’t call her a Mudblood. Before you go and say "well it was just one time and he was angry", this is basically the equivalent of a white person calling their black friend the n-word and intending it to be offensive. That definitely wouldn't be okay in our world. If Snape loved Lily he would also treat her child decently no matter how much he looked like his childhood bully. Yes, that’s got to be pretty infuriating, like a big “fuck you” from the world, but no matter how much Harry looks like James, he doesn’t act like him. Unlike James was, Harry is humble and doesn’t want the attention he gets. His eyes are Lily’s, but the majority of his personality is hers, too. Snape just didn’t give it a chance. “He looks like James, I hate James, therefore I hate this lookalike.” 

  
Why did Lily choose James over Snape? Because James grew up; Snape didn’t. Snape is probably on a list of top ten longest held grudges. I’m not saying James was a good person in his teenagehood. He definitely wasn’t. He relentlessly bullied Snape and constantly harassed Lily to go out with him. But he grew out of all that and joined the Order of The Phoenix, willing to risk his life to help defeat Voldemort. Meanwhile, Snape went the complete opposite direction, letting his anger and resentment lead him to the Death Eaters.

  
That’s not even MENTIONING the specific examples of all the bullying he did to his students, especially Neville. My guess is that he particularly hated Neville because he could’ve been in Harry’s place; if Voldemort had chosen Neville instead of Harry, Lily would still be alive. Snape was Neville’s worst fear. How fucked up is that?! Of all the things in the world, including the most powerful wizard murderer in the world and the Death Eater that tortured his parents into insanity, his _teacher_ is his greatest fear. Snape threatened to kill his toad, Trevor, too, when Neville messed up his potion, by making the toad drink the incorrect potion. He harassed Hermione for being intelligent, and even insulted her appearance when Draco and his cronies hit her with a tooth-growing charm. Hermione was described to have buck teeth already, and when the spell hit and they began growing even larger, he said, and I quote, “I see no difference.” He hated Harry from the start, obviously, picking on him in his very first potion’s class.

  
But, let’s fast forward to where we learn what he’s been doing as a double agent. He helped Dumbledore _for Lily_. He loved Lily enough to stop being a Death Eater, but not enough to be decent to her son? Okay? Not to mention when he walked into her house to find her and her husband dead with their baby sitting alone in his crib, and he completely ignored them and went straight to Lily. There are tons and tons of examples of Snape being a terrible person, no matter how much his one good deed helped. I think a quote from BBC’s Sherlock Holmes is a good way to sum this up: “I may be on the side of the angels, but don’t think for one second that I am one of them.”

Thanks for reading! Snape lovers will always be Snape lovers, so I doubt I’ve convinced anyone. This was really just a rant, to be honest.


End file.
